Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason

Halfway through Meg Mason’s Sorrow and Bliss, I thought, “Paige isn’t going to finish this.” It felt like a very similar experience to Beautiful World, Where Are You—though I will say I giggled a lot more in Mason’s world. 

I haven’t seen Paige’s review yet (it’s more fun this way!); check it out here and see how much our opinions (don’t) match up on this one.

Again, it was the writing style that I loved most. Intricate, witty details about—really—the mundane instances one might experience throughout their life. Martha narrates her experience with what seems to be some form of manic depression, and how she coexists with family, husbands (one terrible, one perfect), mentors, etc. 

“Everything is broken and messed up and completely fine. That is what life is. It’s only the ratios that change. usually on their own.”

Martha is extreme and selfish and in pain and brutally self-aware—which adds to the complicatedness of every recount. Her deadpan humor is impactfully dry; a personal aspiration of mine, which probably helped draw me in and hold me tight. 

Mason is a brilliant writer who does not give us much action at all. There is one quote (that I stupidly didn’t notate but will look tirelessly for next time I’m doing absolutely nothing, and replace this silly parenthetical with the exact words so you readers of the future won’t have to suffer like you are right now) that Martha told us about feedback she got on her writing style—something about having an impressive talent of being incredibly detailed but saying absolutely nothing at all. I laughed out loud, reading that. It was exactly the reason I was enjoying myself so much as I devoured every page. 

​​“Ideally, Martha, you want to figure out the reason why you keep burning your own house down.”

It was frustrating to watch and feel Martha’s insistence on self-sabotage; a theme that both underlined and punctuated her entire life (after “a little bomb went off in her brain” at 17). She was not a particularly likable character, but she made an absolutely endearing narrator. To pull such an emotionally-dependent (you’ve got to manipulate the reader in a very specific way) thing off, is, to me, proof of an exceptional writer.

Though, of course, it didn’t work on my cousin, so maybe (I say maybe to make myself feel better, but this next sentiment has already been proven again and again) I’m just a sucker for someone else’s drama.